Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Yes it's been a long time. Yes I've been busy with things other than EVE, and other than games even. This winter I pushed my drumming to the limit with my drumline, going even as far as playing my own drumkit with the drumline. And one does not simply do that without ungodly amounts of practice. Therefore, no gaming, no blogging, and only flams, drags and paradiddles.

As the drumline is taking a short break before the start of the CFL season I am also about to move house, so yeah, I feel like I no longer have any control over anything even resembling a schedule. But me being me I do find a way to put some gaming in and am even subbed into EVE at the moment, though I'll admit that apart from skilling I'm not doing much because playing EVE on a tight schedule is an impossibilty for me; and I don't want to hear from anyone with advice or anything of the sort. I can't. Period. But as I slowly skill up for my suitcase Nidhoggur, here are some other games that received my attention:

- Trackmania2 Stadium: while I don't think I'll ever be competitively fast, I found a lot of interest in building competition tracks. Maybe I can bring down the pro players to my level :)

- Kerbal Space Program: because rockets and MOAR BOOSTERS!

- Skyrim: I still check out new mods and take the occasional romp through the countryside.

- Quake Live: because I need to check once in a while if I still got it. I do >:)

Anyway, here's to hoping I get some handle on my play time; yes playing drums is tons of fun but there are some times when it starts to feel like a chore and that's never good.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

It is about a couple of week since a little dead-end system in the ass-end of Immensea went from just another staging system in Null-sec space to a battlefield with legendary status over night. So legendary that in the space of 48 hours after the end of the following downtime (which happened to break standings... good job breaking stuff again CCP) people who previously had no idea what EVE Online is are now interested in its vast and crazy politics and economics. I have buddies at work who are gamers but refuse to start playing EVE because they know of the commitment required and claim they don't have the time, but the Battle of B-R5RB (henceforth known as "Titanomachy") have pushed them just a little closer to the deep end of the pool and it wouldn't take much to see them dive in.

The way it happened from my spectator's perspective, having nothing to do with any of the coalitions (more on this later):

At around 11AM last Monday I get a message from my buddy Cartboard Box that said the following: "PL just lost 3 titans, losing more as we speak". I asked if this was another Asakai event (some dude jumping his Titan to the bridging cyno) but the answer was swift... "Someone forgot to pay the sov bill in the staging system. CFC went balls deep". The rest of that afternoon had me poking at CB for more info as more and more titans were dying, time dilation started kicking in, and all Hell broke lose.

When I got home the roles were reversed as I was the one with access to the streams and #tweetfleet on Twitter, and as the evening advanced my jaw kept digging a bigger dent in the floor. First the smashing of the previous "titans killed in a single battle" which was 12. And then the 20 mark, 30, 40, 50... at that point reports started getting different from one source to the next. Some sources were saying that over 100 titans had died while others were very conservative at around 40. It would take CCP going through the logs to find out, and a few short days after the battle, they delivered the results. Of course I had to explain to tons of people who were now discovering this game about space conquests and "how in the world does one lose 300 thousand US dollars worth of internet spaceships made of pixels?!". I could scarcely believe it myself and had to do the the ISK/USD conversion by hand multiple times to be convinced.

Now that the battle is history, CCP turned it into the most dangerous tourist attraction on the face of New Eden. As of this writing I have yet to do the pilgrimage, but anyone who has read the EVE content on this blog knows that not only am I crazy enough to do it, I plan on doing it very soon indeed. It should be a fun trip :)

***

The last move, at least for a while!

I've said it before and I'll said it again, playing EVE on a tight schedule is a hard thing to do but the lure of space is too great to give up. But there are some annoyances that need to be avoided when you can only log in every so often but still want to have fun. I've narrowed it down to three things: wardecs, reinforcement timers, and moving. The corp I was in just before the holidays had great people to fly with, but it became part of an alliance that lives constantly under multiple wardecs and moving often to bring the fight to the enemy. I have nothing against flying in the middle of hostiles but I do need a breather sometimes. Timers of course mean that X POS will come out of reinforced at Y hour, which of course had a tendency to happen either in the middle of my work day or while I knew I was busy somewhere else. But logging in after a week spent out of game for various reasons to find out the alliance is now 15 jumps away and you're alone in a sea of flashies, that just blows chunks. During the holidays I got very sick coming down with influenza H1N1 v2.0, which kicked my ass like nothing had kicked it before. When I started getting better I did play a little bit of EVE but it was only to consolidate my assets because I knew a move would be in order. But I also knew that a small financial snag meant my account would have to go dormant for 3 weeks. No biggie, it even gave me time to plan Cozmik R5's future.

The first decision I took was to train a ship class I've been putting off for the longest time: carriers. As much as I hated to move that often, it taught me that having my own carrier would have saved a lot of headaches. But to continue proving my disdain of capital ships, I will go for the Nidhoggur! Second was to find a new home, and that was very easy because something special happened. One of the Montreal EVE Meet regulars is pretty highly ranked in the alliance that has always been one of my favorite enemies. With the green light from the alliance he offered me sanctuary and the Red Carpet Treatment. So now unless another massive war happens again I have made my home in the heart of Providence among CVA! But fear not (or rather, fear!), even though the region still plays under NRDS rules of engagement, the role-playing CVA of old is no more and there is a very stong core of pure PvP players which I am now a part of. And there is no shortage of targets because pretty much half of New-Eden is red to me! Another advantage, I know the region like the back of my hand from having hunted and roamed in it for so long. Only this time the ever-annoying jump bridge network is now something I have access to.

So yeah. Some would say that I've turned coat. Some others would say that I've turned into an Amarr loving POS (and I do NOT mean player owned structure) role-playing hostie d'tapette. But in reality all I do is what I've always done: follow an FC's orders, give him the best intel he can have, and tackle/trample whatever happens to be in the way!

PS: Yes, we visited Titanomachy. and obviously Razor Alliance had bubbled out the wazoo. But we had a great fight. Not a tenth as great as the fight that had happened there the week before but a great skirmish nonetheless!